


Flashes

by pluto



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluto/pseuds/pluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What might have been but wasn't, what shouldn't have been but was.</p><p>[spoilers for ME3]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashes

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to sort out how I felt about the ME3 ending. (I chose Synthesis; not sure if I'd do it again.)
> 
> There's so much Commander Shepard deserves that she never received, and so much she fought for that was lost. I've tried to give her some of that back, in a canon-respectful way.
> 
> But maybe I ought to boost my EMS up to 4000 and choose the Destroy ending instead, so that Shepard breathes (and perhaps lives) and write how Shepard and Garrus are reunited, and help bring things back to some modicum of normalcy.

i.

They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes.

#

All the choices the Catalyst offers her taste like bitter ash in her mouth, but when the moment comes, Shepard faces her death the way she faces everything. Head held high, grinning fiercely and running towards the next fight. Doesn't matter if it's her last.

"I won't go down easy," she vows, before she flings herself into death's eager embrace.

 

ii.

She's on the beach, the sand warm between her toes.

"Hey Shepard," he says. The sun catches in the ridges of Garrus's scars as he drops down beside her. He has two drinks with umbrellas in hand, one a murky martini, dirty as hell, the way she likes, and the other a ferocious fuchsia, something dextro-friendly. The sun bakes her skin pleasantly. She leans over as he hands her the martini, bumping shoulders with him. He chuckles. "Miss me already?"

"Not even a little, Vakarian." She smirks and sips her drink. The view is gorgeous: golden sand, blue water, and the dead hulk of a reaper in the distance. Seabirds squat and bicker in the massive crater where there was once a red eye of death.

Garrus's arm wraps her shoulders and he gives her a squeeze. "You look happy."

She smiles at him, presses against the solidness of his body. "Just thinking that victory feels pretty damn sweet."

He chuckles. "Funny, I was thinking the same thing."

They clink glasses and drink. "So," she says, tilting her head against his shoulder, "Feel like blowing off a little victory steam?"

He agrees, eagerly.

#

She's on Tuchunka, playfully hitting Wrex in the shoulder. They've just returned from visiting the new Mordin Solus memorial. She misses her old friend; left him an audio file of _Pirates of Penzance_.

"Shit, Wrex, _three_ already?"

The little krogan run around Shepard pointing sticks at each other and making "pew pew" noises. She wonders if that's some sort of galactic constant. She tries to imagine baby Elcor doing the same thing, but can't quite manage it.

Wrex gives a slightly sheepish laugh. "Thought you'd be here sooner."

"Yeah, well…" She grins. He grins.

Garrus comes into the room just in time for one of the kids to collide with his legs. The little one falls down, shakes her head. Looking at Wrex, the young krogan debates something, and then begins squalling.

Wrex groans and goes over to set the little one on her feet, reassuring her in his gruff way. Garrus watches, and Shepard watches him watching.

She slips an arm around his waist. "You remember that crazy idea of yours?"

Garrus laughs. "Of course. First turian-human baby, Shepard, nobody's beat us yet. We could still do it. Or, adopt, if you want to go the really boring route."

"You weren't... aren't serious, are you?" Shepard tries to make it nonchalant, blow it off.

"Oh, I don't know." He's the same, she can tell. Trying to be casual.

"The woman with a serial suicide-mission habit and the turian formerly known as Archangel hauling a brat around on a military frigate? We'd only be the galaxy's worst parents."

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe."

"…I'd still like to try," she says.

"Me, too."

#

She's walking arm-in-arm with Liara.

"You are getting soft, Shepard."

She cocks a crooked grin at the asari. "Yeah, maybe I am."

"You see? Once you would never have let me get away with saying such a thing. I suppose you haven't killed anything in several months."

"Hey! Garrus and I chased off that whole merc squad squatting on Antiiza."

"That was nearly a year ago, Shepard. And I seem to recall you saying something about 'I need to get home in time to pick up the children.'"

"No, it was 'Garrus needs to get home in time to pick up the children' and it was five months ago."

"Soft," Liara repeats, but she smiles.

"A little, maybe," Shepard says. "Funny part is... not sure I mind all that much."

"Good," Liara says, squeezing Shepard's arm.

#

She's kissing Tali's bare cheek, listening to her gush how Rannoch has bloomed under the joint care of the Quarians and the Geth. She looks at the Geth all around her, looks for Legion in all their faces.

"You haven't heard a word I've said, have you, Shepard?" Tali asks, teasing.

"Not true," Shepard says.

"Then what was I talking about, hm?"

"Uh, there was something about the latest suit fashion and furry fliers...?"

Tali giggles and shakes her head. After all these years, it's still strange to see Tali without her facemask, dark hair tumbling around her pretty face. "Your son was deployed last week, wasn't he?"

Shepard looks up at the stars. "Yeah." A little later, she says, "You know, I never expected to have children. Hell, if I'm honest... I'm not even sure I expected to get this damn old. Just figured there was a bullet out there with my name on it. And now, look at me."

"Yes, look at you, Shepard. They would make you a councillor if you even so much as hinted..."

Shepard groans. "Don't even joke!" She stretches. "Now I have to go kick something's ass."

"Same old Shepard." Tali laughs, and Shepard laughs with her.

#

She's fighting back to back with Garrus, cackling like a maniac, halfway wondering if today's the day they die. The council all but forbid the two of them to take this assignment, which, of course, meant that they were there before any Spectre or fleet ship even had wind of the job. Benefit of their new, shiny titles.

But there's an ache in her knee when she crouches behind cover and her aim isn't quite so good any more, and she notices Garrus squints into his scope more than usual.

"Is the council right?" he asks her, later, as they lie panting in the shuttle bay. "Are we too goddamn old for this?"

"Never," she growls, rolling atop him. "Why, you ready to give up?"

"Not today," Garrus says, "Still too much to do. Too much to live for."

She kisses him.

#

She's back on the beach. The Reaper in the water has long since been reclaimed by nature, rising as a green-covered hump in the water. Her hair is white, root to tip, and her face is deeply lined.

She stands on her homeworld, on Earth, and looks up at the stars.

She feels tired, tired in a way she hasn't felt for a long, long time, since the beam that brought her up to the Citadel so long ago. She remembers barely being able to stand, agony draining all the strength from her body. She remembers seeing the bodies of her friends and being so sure they were dead. Garrus facedown in the dirt. Tali with her mask cracked open.

She remembers just wishing with every fiber of her body for rest, for peace. But people like her die for peace; they don't get to enjoy it.

They don't get to enjoy it.

Garrus's hand touches hers, and she turns to him. Her face is wet. She ignores the tears.

"Is it time to go?" she asks him. He shrugs, squeezes her fingers.

"Whenever you're ready. You know where to find me."

She watches him go, stares into the dark long after he is gone.

The sand between her toes is cold.

 

iii.

She's in a bar. It's Purgatory, Afterlife, a million other bars. It's good, familiar. Tali and Grunt, chatting in a corner. Kaiden and Vega and Jack. Garrus sits down beside her. "Shepard."

"Took you long enough," she says to him.

He laughs. "Me? I've been here a while, waiting on you. You gonna put that down?"

She glances in her lap. The Predator is still in her hands. "I… I don't know."

He puts his hand over hers.

"You've earned this, Shepard," he says, softly.

She tightens her fingers around the grip of the pistol. "I'm not ready."

"There's a time to fight, and a time to put down your guns for the greater good. You taught me that." He looks at her with a grin in his eyes.

"Was it really for the greater good?" she asks. Bitterness rises up in her.

He slips an arm around her shoulder, steers her to the window.

At first, there are only stars. Stars she loved, stars of distant worlds, stars between worlds.

Then she sees the life that she lost, the life that could have been: love and old age and admiralties and old friends and family. She swallows her tears for that lost life. She sees the life that is reality, now, and the life that will go on without her. The galaxy sundered, everything changed, the wars and the plague and the famine and the death. But not only that. Never only that. Peace too, alliances forged in her name, in her memory. Krogan working with salarians to help boost the liveship capacity, to feed the quarians and turians. Asari and volus terraforming the moon, rebuilding Earth, alongside the humans. Battleships turned into colony ships.

And so many years from now, the first intersystem jump gate, and then more and more, until once again the races spread out over the stars...

"Yes," Garrus says. "It was worth it."

Shepard lets out a long breath she didn't realize she was holding. She looks at the Predator in her hand; then she lays it down on the bar. She pulls up a stool. Waves over to the bartender, slides an arm around Garrus's waist.

"On my way here," she says, leaning against him, "I had this crazy dream…"

"First turian-human baby?"

She grins, and he laughs, and she closes her eyes, letting herself go.


End file.
